Burj Al Salam on track for 2012 delivery

Dubai Contracting Company LLC (DCC) is fast-tracking the $194m Burj Al Salam mixed-use project at No. 1 Sheikh Zayed Road, next to the Monarch Hotel, for a November 2012 delivery.

“DCC took over the mixed-use development project from another contractor in November 2010, and is committed to a very tight schedule to complete what is essentially three towers in the space of one,” comments construction manager Hatem Al-biss.

The project comprises a hotel tower with four basement levels, a ground floor, a mezzanine, 54 additional floor and two mechanical floors.

The residential tower has 54 additional floors and two mechanical floors. Lastly, the office tower has 50 additional floors and two mechanical floors. All three towers are linked at the base by a four-storey podium, and will again be interconnected at Level 10.

DCC is working on all three towers simultaneously, with both major time and space constraints, completing four floors per month, with each floor covering 4,800m2. A total of 2,600m3 of concrete is being used on each floor.

Doka Gulf FZE offered a high level of professionalism in design and on formwork coordination onsite. According to product manager Gerald Hoermann, “Design considerations were a primary concern from the beginning of our engagement with DCC.

“To meet DCC’s ambitious schedule of completing four floors in one month, we optimised our joint planning efforts to ensure we could plan formwork to meet their deadline.

“An additional challenge was the need for just-in-time deliveries due to virtually no place to stockpile formwork material onsite,” says Hoermann.

For the three core walls, a total of 173 automatic climbing Doka SKE 50 units, plus 2,400m2 of large-area Top 50 panels, were adapted to cope with the geometry changes on higher floors.

For the huge circular columns, with a diameter of up to 2m, Doka provided ready-to-use large-area Top 50 panels. Furthermore 4,800m2 of ready-to-use Dokaflex tables for the slab and beam support were assembled onsite.

The core wall is running three floors ahead of the slab, in order to split the work between the verticals and horizontals – mainly to simplify site organisation and ease difficulties of scheduling, says Hoermann. In this manner, work crews maintain a steady rhythm that allows them to work on separate floors.

Extended services from Doka to ensure the schedule was maintained were a dedicated site supervisor onsite through the project, plus certification training of DCC’s crew to operate the hydraulic SKE system, and safety training for all managers.

Due to the huge size of the construction site at Burj al Salam, three placing booms are sitting within the core walls themselves, plus one additional boom placed in the slab.

Three tower cranes are also being used onsite, placing an even greater challenge on DCC and Doka, in terms of the formwork design around these parameters.

“With a huge slab area and extensive core walls, there was no space onsite. Doka met us on a weekly basis to decide which materials were needed, and then delivered them on a just-in-time basis.

“Based on our experience with Doka on another project, Sama Tower, I knew I could rely on their team to ensure a timely project schedule,” comments Al-biss